The Next Nightmare: Sino-Indian War

So, of course...

So far, in 2020, we’ve had Coronavirus, riots in the streets,  killings of police, killings by police, international humiliation, recession, quarantines, idiots with guns protesting quarantines, global warming, murder hornets, brushfires the size of countries, wars in the Middle east, Earthquakes, floods, locusts in East Africa, terrorist attacks, airliners blown up by trigger happy Iranians, Brexit, and, oh, yes, Donald Trump is still in the White House.

So what’s next?

Why, of course, border clashes between India and China, both of whom have nuclear weapons. Naturally. Who could have doubted it? Just what we need.

I’m pretty sure they’ll work it out, eventually. Neither of them exactly wants war.

But, on the other hand...

Just fyi, if any more of the four horsemen show up, I’m moving to Mars.

A Bold Fashion Statement

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Guns & Blood In ABQ

This happened in Albuquerque on Monday. There was a protest in what’s called “Old Town,” which is the historical center of the city, and is now a major tourist destination. The protest was about a statue of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate (1550-1626). This gentleman is controversial to say the least. He was an early governor of New Mexico, and was an explorer of much of what is now the Southwestern United States.

But...he was not particularly gentle. Among other things, he was responsible for the massacre of about 500 native Americans at Acoma Pueblo. He also ordered many of the survivors of the massacre mutilated (all men over 25 lost a foot) and then deported to Mexico City where they were sold into slavery. In fact, he was so brutal that when King Philip of Spain heard about the events at Acoma, he had Oñate recalled from New Mexico, never to return.

Thus, the statue of him in Old Town has always been a bit of a sore point for the Native Americans of New Mexico, and for their allies. So, on 15 June, a group of them gathered at Old Town and called for the statue to be removed, the way that statues of Confederate soldiers are being removed from the South, and those of slave traders are being hauled away in the U.K.

However...

A private militia group calling itself the “New Mexico Civil Guard” also arrived at the site. They were very heavily armed and, according to news reports, began intimidating the protestors with their weapons.

What happened after that is still unclear, but apparently there was some sort of a scuffle between the protestors and one or more of the militia members. It seems that one of the militia men threw a woman, presumably a protestor, to the ground. Then, the crowd moved in on the militia man. He then did exactly what you’d expect. He pulled out his gun and used it.

As of yesterday, the report was that one man ...a protestor...had been shot and was in the hospital in “critical but stable” condition.

The Albuquerque Police...bless them!...swooped in and arrested the militia members.  The shooter has been booked on charges of aggravated battery.

Now, why am I telling you all this? Because, for one thing, Albuquerque is my home town. I don’t live there right now, but I did for several years. And so I’m particularly interested in what goes on in the city.

And, for another...because I’m been saying for years that the presence of heavily armed “militias,” like the ones that invaded state legislatures during anti-quarantine demonstrations, are incompatible with democracy...and that it was only a matter of time before the militia members started trying to kill their opponents. Which means liberals, Democrats, Never Trump Republicans, and anyone else that they just don’t like.

Which means, this incident, if nothing else, is proof positive of my thesis...

When all this is done and said, and Trump is out of the White House, the next thing we must do is think long and hard about the fact that the Right has decided it is okay to use weapons against their fellow Americans in political disputes.

And we must decide what to do about that.

Before it is far too late.

Sources:

"Armed ‘militia’ members arrested, gunman identified after man is shot at Albuquerque protest," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/16/albuquerque-militia-shooting-protest/

‘Horrified and disgusted beyond words’, Albuquerque Journal, https://www.abqjournal.com/1466626/one-man-shot-during-protest-in-old-town-albuquerque.html

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

We Won’t Defund The Police

I’m going to be blunt. We aren’t going to defund the police and saying that we will is either naive or irresponsibly incendiary.  And the reason we won’t defund the police or disband them is that we need them.

Every society, no matter how Utopian, has its share of bad apples. So long as humans are humans, with all the limitations there-of, we will have among us criminals, bullies, trouble makers, vandals, domestic abusers, and, yes, murderers. And so we will always have a need for someone to control such people.

Ergo, to say that we will do without them is as silly as saying that we’ll have no more fire-fighters because, in a truly enlightened society, there will be no flames.

What we can do, though, is revamp and reform the police so that they and the community are thoroughly intertwined. If we can do that...if we can make certain that police officers are recruited from every walk of life...if we can make “community policing” the norm...if, each time a demonstrator, or even just a pedestrian, confronts an officer of the law, both people in the equation see the other’s humanity....

Then, at last, we have obtained a form of law and order which is also compassionate and kind.

With justice For All

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Economists Are Not To Be Trusted

I was prowling around my hard disk and stumbled across an article I’d saved a long time ago and then completely forgotten about. Specifically, it was “The Tyranny of Economists: How can they be so wrong, so often, and yet still exert so much influence on government policy?” by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, which was published in the New Republic way back in September of 2019.

It is partly an essay by Kaiser-Schatzlein and partly a review of a book, The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and The Fracture of Society, by Binyamin Appelbaum. Both Appelbaum and Kaiser-Schatzlein agree that something went terribly wrong sometime starting in the 1980s when free markets and deregulation became dogma and Economists became the unquestioned priests of that dogma. Suddenly, any governmental interference in the economy was seen as an unmitigated evil, while a cadre of economic consultants and professors were given the power to, effectively, determine things like life and death--quite literally, as their “cost benefit analysis” of what an individual life was worth might well determine product liability laws.

But, say both authors, the most amazing thing about the rule of the economists was that the economists themselves were, as a rule, always wrong. Notes Kaiser-Schatzleim, “If you look at the economic theories put forth during the economists’ hour—from Friedman’s monetarism to Arthur Laffer’s supply-side economics... the theories often demonstrably did not do what they were supposed to do. Monetarism didn’t curb inflation, lax antitrust and low regulation didn’t spur innovation, and low taxes didn’t increase corporate investment.”

So why, then, both authors ask, did society and government continue to believe them? Because, of course, the economists were telling the Power Elite exactly what it wanted to hear, regardless of the actual evidence. Again, quoting Kaiser-Schatzleim, “...what economists’ ideas did do, quite effectively, was divert wealth from the bottom to the top. This entrenched their power among the winners they helped create.”

In other words, the economists were prophets of the great god Mammon, and Mammon’s most powerful worshipers responded accordingly.

Where the two authors disagree is in what happens next. Appelbaum thinks that the free market economists have proven themselves so wrong, and so alienated the vast majority of us, that in the end they will be overthrown. Kaiser-Schatzleim isn’t nearly so optimistic.

Which is correct? I have no way of knowing. But I am fascinated that these ideas are being, finally, mooted about. Basically, no one has dared discuss such things (at least in professional settings) since Ronald Regan and Maggie Thatcher converted the world to free market fundamentalism.

So...I wonder... could it be? Just perhaps? In some fashion...

Once again we shall remember that economists ...and particularly free market economists...are neither scientists nor gods...but rather all too human...

And all too prone to confuse their own biases and misunderstandings for rigor, and wisdom, and...

The inevitable.

***


About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Anti-Mask Men With Small Peenies

I find it fascinating that not wearing a mask in the midst of the current pandemic has, somehow, become a means of demonstrating just how big your penis is. I mean, how tough you are. I see postings on Facebook and elsewhere reading, “I refuse to wear a mask because I refuse to live in fear.”

And, already, we’ve seen people take the next logical step from there. That is, to say that wearing a mask must be a sign of weakness and cowardliness. And, of course, weaklings are made to b e bullied. That is the Will Of God...as interpreted by the church of the Deplorable...

Thus, the anti-mask movement has revealed its true colors with remarkable speed. It is no longer about the freedom to go without a mask. It is now about the suppression of my right to protect my health as I see fit.

Or, to put it another way, the anti-mask movement was never about liberty. It was, and is, about being a bully.

Nothing more. And nothing less.

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I Couldn’t Give Blood

Funny what seems important in the midst of a crisis.

I had kind of a bummer of a morning this a.m. Nothing serious. Just a mild downer.

What happened is that I couldn’t give blood, or, more precisely, platelets. I originally got started doing this because I may have had Covid-19 back in February. If so, I’d like to donate blood to the various programs that are experimenting with “convalescent plasma therapy.” That’s where doctors take plasma from someone who has already recovered from a disease and inject it into people who are still sick from it. The antibodies in the donated plasma then fight the disease -- in this case Covid.

I would like to do that, but the antibody tests are just not available yet, and the way we’re going, may never be.

Still, my local blood bank, WeAreBlood.org, suggested instead that I donate platelets. These are the components in the blood that help with clotting, and it turns out there’s always a need for that sort of donation, and it also turns out that my blood type, AB+, is uniquely valuable for platelets.

So, last month I started donating them. Truth be told, it isn’t particularly fun. It doesn’t hurt much. But it does take a long time--about two to three hours. And afterwards, I feel lightheaded and a little ill. In fact, between the process itself, and my state of mind afterwards, I basically lose an entire day.

Still, this morning, off I went. Martha drove me down. I checked in at 10:30 am. Then, next thing I knew, I was on the bed and they had the needle in my arm. A machine next to me whirred into life and everything was in process.

But, about fifteen minutes into things, we discovered that the needle had gone in “at an angle.” This meant the blood couldn’t be returned to my arm after the platelets had been extracted. Which meant that the whole process had to come to a complete halt. No donation that day. And I can’t do it again for another eight weeks.

I was startled by how depressed I was about it all. I had gotten myself geared up for the adventure, only to have it end in frustrating failure. I had all the negative aspects of the experience -- the wasted day, the vague feeling of lightheadedness -- with none of the satisfaction of knowing that maybe, just maybe, what I had done would be of use to someone. That is, I didn’t even have the hope that my platelets went to a patient who really, really needed them.

Though, I suppose there is a larger issue behind all of this, something I don’t necessarily think about consciously, but which is present just the same. Like most of us, I feel horribly helpless in the midst of all the bad news...the pandemic, the politics, armed protestors in Michigan and elsewhere, authorities who do not seem remotely competent, the fact that as of this date (I write this on 22, May, 2020) the United States has seen over 94,000 deaths from Covid-19...the fact that Trump doesn’t seem a damn about that...

And, well...everything...

Giving blood, or, rather, platelets was one small way for me to be of some service.

It is unpleasant to have that taken away, even if only for a time...

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I’m A Bookie (again)

Okay, the title of this piece was a stupid joke,  but somebody had to tell it.

I am, once again, starting to gather up some of my essays and putting them out into the world as books. Right at the moment, I’m focusing on pieces I did for Liberal Resistance dot Net, the little online political publication that I helped edit between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2020.

I’ve just collected most (not all, but most) of the pieces I did for 2017 and put them into book form. The title is We Don't Want To Be Like That: Essays From LiberalResistance.net (2017) and it’s published by Belfort & Bastion. You can see the hardcopy version here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0889YZ1RK

Or, if you prefer, here’s the e-book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088DJH6QB

And stay tuned folks. Lots more to come.

mjt

PS -- LiberalResistance(dot)net is still very much in operation, btw. I even write for it now and then. I just don’t edit it any more.

But, when you get a moment, give it a glance. It is here: https://usaunify.org/liberalresistance/

They are not well

Yesterday, I wrote about  Ohio Governor Mike DeWine who basically told a bunch of anti-quarantine yahoos to stop acting like thugs and bullies and to behave themselves. (Three cheers, Gov. DeWine!)

But you’ll recall that along with the story, I posted a video of a protesting woman who was basically abusing a local reporter. I looked at that video again, and I thought that we really all ought to give it a careful glance. Watch it now...or at least as much of it as you can before the cringe gets you.

Listen to her. Watch her eyes and her expression. This is not a person you would care to meet in a dark alley....or anywhere else, for that matter. This is someone who could be a real problem.

Think about her, then, when it comes time to vote. Remember, you may or may not vote...it’s your choice...but she most certainly will.

Do you really want people like her running the planet for four more years?

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Covid and La Peste - Camus Had It Right

I was thinking, today, about the anti-quarantine protestors and the others who have refused even the most minimal protections (of themselves and others) from Covid-19, and I was put in mind of this passage from Camus’ La Peste.

The test is below, but I've also read it and posted it to Soundcloud. Just click here and you'll be taken to where you can hear it.


From The Plague, by Albert Camus


The word “plague” had just been uttered for the  first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr.  Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the  doctor’s uncertainty and surprise — since, with  very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of  the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that  pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues  as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people  equally by surprise. 


In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his  guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was tom between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks  out, people say: “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But  though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent  its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we  should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. 


In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else,  wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a  thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves  that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that  will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from  one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the  humanists first of all, because they haven’t taken their precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than  others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought  that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing  business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How  should they have given a thought to anything like plague,  which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one  will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.  

~~~

 

 About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How Trump & Fantasy Scr@wed Us

Powerful article on Politico's site, Inside America’s 2-Decade Failure to Prepare for Coronavirus, by Dan Diamond. In it, Mr. Diamond looks at how we were warned that something like Covid-19 was coming, but the prophets were often heeded only late in the game...or not all. When Mike Leavitt, Bush's secretary of health urged Americans to prepare for Bird Flu, everyone from Right Wing pundits to late show TV hosts --among them Jay Leno-- joined in a merry game of mocking him and his "alarmist" warnings.

However, until recently, Presidents did tend to pay at least some attention to their medical experts. Trump is another matter entirely. For him, science was entirely subordinate to the fantasy he wished to project upon the universe. (Not that the Left has any business being smug on that score. After all, postmodernism--which is widely believed on the Left-- has spent several decades assuring itself and others that "reality is socially created." Tell that to someone dying for lack of a ventilator.)

But, now, Trump and his fantasist enablers, and all those billionaires who were certain that everything would be fine if we just drowned government in the bathtub, have run into a situation in which no amount of fantasy can trump (sorry) reality, and in which a government small enough to drown in a bathtub is also one which cannot protect us from serious threat of death and economic depression.

So, for heaven's sake, let us vote Trump out of office, and let us make certain that nothing like him returns there, and let us (maybe most important of all) pay more attention in future to people like Mike Leavitt and less to people like Jay Leno.

After all, the lives we save may be our own.

Pay Attention

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Max Boot On Why Republicans Must Endorse Biden

Here's an fascinating piece. Max Boot, one of the more amazing of the conservatives who have decided that Trump is toxic waste, is writing in the Washington Post that if you're a Republican and if you're honorable, then you must endorse Biden.

In a word, whoa.

But good for you, Mr. Boot. Well said.

You know who...

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.